Poems of Passion

Ella Wheeler Wilcox née Ella Wheeler (born Nov. 5 1850 Johnstown Center Rock county Wis. U.S.--died Oct. 30 1919 Short Beach Conn.) American poet and journalist who is perhaps best remembered for verse tinged with an eroticism that while rather oblique was still unconventional for her time.Ella Wheeler from an early age was an avid reader of popular literature especially the novels of E.D.E.N. Southworth Mary Jane Holmes and Ouida. Her first published work some sketches submitted to the New York Mercury appeared when she was 14 years old. Soon her poems were appearing in the Waverly Magazine and Leslies Weekly. Except for a year at the University of Wisconsin (1867-68) she devoted herself thereafter to writing.Wheelers first book a collection of temperance verses appeared in 1872 as Drops of Water. Shells a collection of religious and moral poems followed in 1873 and Maurine a highly sentimental verse narrative in 1876. The rejection of her next book a collection of love poems by a Chicago publisher on grounds that it was immoral helped ensure its success when it was issued by another publisher in 1883 as Poems of Passion a titillating title that was as racy as any of the contents. The sale of 60000 copies in two years firmly established Wheelers reputation.In 1884 she married Robert M. Wilcox a businessman. While making herself the centre of a literary coterie Wilcox continued to pour out verses laced with platitudes and easy profundities. They were collected in such volumes as Men Women and Emotions (1893) Poems of Pleasure (1888) Poems of Sentiment (1906) Gems (1912) and World Voices (1918).Wilcox also wrote much fiction including Mal Moulée (1885) A Double Life (1890) Sweet Danger (1892) and A Woman of the World (1904); two autobiographies The Story of a Literary Career (1905) and The Worlds and I (1918); and columns of prose and poetry for various newspapers and articles and essays for Cosmopolitan and other magazines. (britannica.com)